Hey police…why so much killing?

November 25, 2014

As the latest victim of of a fatal shooting by Vancouver police is identified, people are rightly questioning why our police even drew a gun on the man. Yes he was holding a two-by-four but no accounts suggest he ever threatened anyone. And an eye witness account says he was no threat when police shot him.

Unfortunately, Saturday’s shooting appears to be part of a 21st Century trend in Canadian law enforcement to “shoot first and ask questions later”.

We need to find out why police in Vancouver and across most of Canada are killing more people than ever before.

The terrible optics of “gun versus 2×4”

According to press reports, the B.C. Coroners Service said in a statement on Monday that 51-year-old Phuong Na (Tony) Du of Vancouver was shot “during an encounter” with Vancouver police. The incident took place at approximately 5 p.m. on Saturday near the intersection of Knight Street and East 41st Avenue.

The man “died soon after arrival at hospital,” according to the statement.

The fact that has gripped everyone’s attention is that Du was armed with nothing more than a than a length of wooden two-by-four.

Canadian police increasingly shoot to kill

Ontario leads all provinces with 35 killings and British Columbia is second with 13. Quebec at 11 is the only other province to record double digit police killings. With the exception of 1 in New Brunswick, the Maritime provinces have never recorded a death by police officer, according to the Wikipedia collation at least.

The striking fact in the numbers is how dramatically police killings in Canada have increased since the year 2000.

With the exception of Saskatchewan, the majority of all fatal shootings by police in Canada since 1932 have occurred in the last 14 years, since the year 2000.

An average of 58 percent of the killings have occurred in only 17 percent of the time period.

Of the 13 total deaths Wikipedia records for British Columbia, over 69 percent of them (9) have occurred since the year 2000. And actually, it’s 76.9 if you include the shooting death by Vancouver police on Saturday. Click the image to enlarge it.